As Hillary Clinton Steps Away, a Political Era for Women Wanes

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Chelsea, Hillary and Bill Clinton in Little Rock, Ark., on election night in November 1992. Mrs. Clinton’s work as first lady helped her win election as a senator from New York.CreditCreditJim Wilson/The New York Times

For decades in American politics, successful female candidates often belonged to political dynasties, following in the footsteps of a husband or father and relying on their famous last names to reassure voters. That has shifted in recent years: Few if any of the women who won new House seats in November came from powerful political families, and none of the six female presidential candidates do, either.

With Hillary Clinton saying last week that she would not run for president, Mrs. Clinton became both a trailblazing figure and a transitional one. She rose to prominence as the wife of Bill Clinton, as he led Arkansas and then the nation. Her work as first lady helped her become a senator from New York. Over time, because of her own accomplishments, she advanced: presidential candidate, secretary of state, the first woman to be nominated by a major party for the White House.

With Mrs. Clinton not planning to be the seventh woman running in 2020, an endlessly debated question of 2016 — did some voters resist a woman or this woman? — can be tested with women who do not have her political baggage or what turned out to be her establishment stigma.

These women, such as Senators Amy Klobuchar and Kamala Harris, had significant careers in public service in their home states before reaching Washington, and they are now running for president with messages that aim to appeal broadly across ideological and gender lines. Another 2020 candidate, Senator Elizabeth Warren, had an admired career as a law professor before her consumer protection policy interests drew her into government. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand’s grandmother was an influential figure in Albany politics, and Representative Tulsi Gabbard’s father entered elected office around the same time she did, but their family histories in public service are not a factor in the 2020 race. Most of the women who ran for House, Senate and governor in 2018 had also worked their way up professional or political ladders without a male relation going first.

Representative Debbie Dingell, Democrat of Michigan, who succeeded her husband in Congress in 2015, says she believes that she and Mrs. Clinton are emblematic of changing times for women in politics. “I do think I’m that transition,” she said. “Some people would like to say she got it because she had the last name,” referring to her seat in Congress. “But I have my own strong qualifications, and I want people to judge me on what I do.”

Her husband, John Dingell, who died last month, represented her district for 59 years before she ran for office in 2014; his father had served before him. But Ms. Dingell said she worked to establish her own record of accomplishments. She rose at General Motors before she met her husband, kept her career after they married, and headed commissions on a range of issues in Michigan. She was offered entree into Democratic politics in 2000 initially by the president of the United Automobile Workers union, whom she knew from General Motors. When she ran, she said she asked her husband, to his dismay, not to appear at her events.

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CreditAlex Wong/Getty Images

Ms. Dingell said she was the first woman to succeed her husband in Congress while he was still alive. The Center for American Women and Politics counts 47 widows elected or appointed to Congress in their husband’s place. Among them was Margaret Chase Smith, a Republican, who ran for president in 1964, long after her husband’s career was forgotten, said Ellen Fitzpatrick, author of “The Highest Glass Ceiling: Women’s Quest for the American Presidency.”

Female leaders with famous last names — as well as male leaders who have come from family dynasties too — have been members of both political parties over the years; Senator Lisa Murkowski and former senator Nancy Landon Kassebaum both had fathers who were prominent Republicans.

Jean Carnahan, who had been the first lady of Missouri, was appointed to fill the Senate seat held by her husband, Mel, a Democrat, when he died just before the election in 2000. She recalled what it was like to be an active political partner behind the scenes.

“During my husband’s 20-some campaigns, I did the things he least enjoyed doing and that I preferred: writing speeches, designing campaign material, coming up with themes, designing the database, writing letters, scheduling, fund-raising,” she said. As a result, she felt prepared to assume his seat. Although she lost re-election, her daughter (and her son) later entered politics on their own.

Lynn Yeakel, who lost narrowly to Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania when she ran in 1992, said growing up as the child of an 11-term congressman, Porter Hardy Jr., allowed her to envision running for office herself. Like Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose father was a Maryland congressman, Ms. Yeakel said, “that’s the era when those of us who were exposed to political lives with our fathers were not daunted.”

Nonetheless, as a candidate, she said: “I was defined in terms of the men in my life on more than one occasion. That was so infuriating.” She had to dissociate herself from her father’s vote against civil rights legislation during her own campaign.

Male leaders may have provided women with national exposure and political networks, but as Mrs. Clinton found, their conduct and record could also be liabilities. She was criticized not only for her husband’s treatment of women, but also for her embrace of aggressive counterattacks against women who accused Mr. Clinton.

Before she married, she was already known from her student days at Wellesley College and her work on the staff of the special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee that recommended impeaching President Richard M. Nixon. She subordinated her career for many years to her husband’s.

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Jean Carnahan, center, was appointed to fill the Senate seat held by her husband, Mel, when he died just before the election in 2000.CreditPool photo by L.G. Patterson

“You never know with Hillary Clinton, had she not met Bill Clinton, she might well have been a political woman in her own right and maybe life would have been simpler for her,” said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics.

Bill Shaheen, a powerful figure in New Hampshire Democratic circles and the husband of Jeanne Shaheen, the former governor of New Hampshire and now one of its senators, said that American women no longer needed men to pave the way for them. “Jeanne and I made a pact 50 years ago when we got married: I would make the money, and she would make a difference,” he said. “That didn’t happen so much then. It’s happening now all the time.”

Mrs. Clinton’s candidacy changed the dynamic for women who followed her in other ways, too. She meticulously checked all the boxes for what used to be required credentials for the presidency. No major female presidential candidate today has a résumé as expansive as Mrs. Clinton’s, but they are nonetheless seen as credible.

Because so many women are running in 2020, with their range of political experience, ideology and race, the coming election may be a truer test of gender attitudes. “There’s now an awful lot of diversity among these women, you’re not stuck with just one, you get to choose,” Ms. Walsh said. “Let’s see where that goes.”

Women running in 2020 may also be better armed than Mrs. Clinton was against a candidate who broke all political conventions by attacking women in aggressive, sexist terms. “Now they have a bit of a road map,” Ms. Walsh said. “Even things like that horrible last debate, where he was hulking around her, she says in her book, ‘I made the decision not to respond to him and in retrospect maybe I should have turned around and said, back off buddy.’ I think the women running now learned some of that.”

Ms. Dingell, however, sounded a note of caution. “I think there are still challenges for women,” she said, including access to money and networks and even some degree of residual backlash. “It’s just we’re in changing times. People are feeling threatened.”

Terry Shumaker, who worked on both Clintons’ New Hampshire campaigns, said Mrs. Clinton’s popular vote victory was more of a landmark in shifting attitudes than is often recognized.

“I’ve always believed that when we vote for president, it’s a different vote than any other vote we cast,” he said. “It’s a more visceral, gut kind of thing — we want mommy or daddy, somebody bigger than life who will keep us safe. She made it possible for people to envision a woman being president.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A8 of the New York edition with the headline: Last Name Is No Longer Women’s First Asset. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe